Annual ‘What Did I Miss?’ Bleg & Open Thread

Hi, there! I’m R. Tod Kelly. You may remember me from such blogs as this one, or that other one that was really this one but with a totally different name.

I’m just back from over three weeks of vacations, packing for vacations, recovering from vacations, and a series of those kinds of professional conferences that eventually all blend together and bleed into one giant Ramada Inn lounge. At the same time, my iPhone decided to slowly commit suicide — so if I know you it’s possible that either I sent you an email you never received, I sent you an email and you got twelve copies of it over the course of a few days, or I didn’t send you any email but you got one from me anyway, probably noting that I could see you through your bedroom window.[1]

My attention to anything other than all of that has been both scant and sporadic, so in addition to not having been around these parts I also haven’t been plugged-in to the outside world in general. I’ll be diving into OT stuff again starting tomorrow, but until then I bleg of you to tell me what’s been going on.

What did I miss — either here, in the news, or with you? Has anyone impeached Obama while I was away? Did we go to war with Canada? Did terrorists take some historic US landmark hostage, only to be thwarted by a lone-wolf cop who plays by his own rules when he isn’t being chewed out by his tough, cigar-chewing precinct captain?

I remember that before I left things were pretty tense in the Middle East, but that was a few weeks ago. I’m sure they’ve gotten all their issues worked out by now.

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Tod is a writer from the Pacific Northwest. He is also serves as Executive Producer and host of both the7 Deadly Sins Showat Portland's historic Mission Theatre and 7DS: Pants On Fire! at the White Eagle Hotel & Saloon. He is a regular inactive for Marie Claire International and the Daily Beast, and is currently writing a book on the sudden rise of exorcisms in the United States. Follow him on Twitter.

Alsotoo, a civilian airliner flying over one of the disputed eastern provinces of Ukraine got shot down by a missile, Germany won the World Cup, Boehner is going to sue Obama rather than impeach him, the median home price in San Francisco rose over a million dollars, and Francisco Franco is still dead.Report

Also, although Sara Palin advocates impeachment every morning with her first cuppa, and incoming House whip Steve Scalise said he wouldn’t take impeachment off the table, John Boehner decided it would be smart to lie to the public and say the impeachment talk was only coming from the White House. Apparently Palin and Scalise don’t actually exist but are just fictional characters in an Obama fever dream.Report

And they have to deal with polls like this (PDF) that say 57% of those who self-identify as Republican and 56% of those who self-identify as conservative favor impeachment. Of course, the numbers are 75% and 64% for the House lawsuit, so going ahead with that will presumably mollify the base. I don’t know as much as I should about the pace of the federal courts; if Boehner filed the suit today, when would the President’s lawyers get to argue that the House lacks standing?Report

Rob Ford’s out of rehab and still running for re-election in Toronto. Apparently, his nephew/cousin/something Mikey Ford will also be running for office. At the annual FordFest, there were tons of protesters, lots of homophobia, some choking and fist fights. It was in a public park and there was a family nearby having a birthday party.Report

It's funny how browsers I think are a thing (specifically Vivaldi and Brave) don't even register on this list. Goes to show my techie bubble.

Browsers used to have better names. Netscape was brilliant. What the heck is a Firefox? (It's "Firebird" with IP considerations is what it is.) Chrome? Edge? Edge? Come on.

It's amazing how quickly Chrome accomplished what Firefox never did. It just goes to show the power of corporate muscle. When Google announced they were creating a browser I thought it was kind of dumb. I was wrong.

People say Firefox is better than Chrome now but I just can't get into the groove of it. Chrome doesn't work right on one of my computers and I use Firefox on it. it's passable, but I wish Chrome worked on it.

With Internet Explorer being replaced by Edge and Edge being Chrome-based, that means may be looking at 3 of the top 5 and 85% of desktop browsing occurring through Chromium browsers. That's concerning.

The ship's presence, he speculated, might have been related to the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Did Trump tweet anything about this, you ask?

The United States is learning much from the failed missile explosion in Russia. We have similar, though more advanced, technology. The Russian “Skyfall” explosion has people worried about the air around the facility, and far beyond. Not good!

As some of you know, I lost my father two weeks ago. My mother called me that Friday afternoon and said, in not such direct words, that “you better try to get up here if you can.”

I did, but I was too late. But in the aftermath of it, it was good to be there. My mother and I ate together for two weeks (my brother and his family are coming in later, such are the vagaries of scheduling bereavement leave in a government agency). We cooked some favorite things. My mom roasted a chicken and then laughed ruefully and said “I guess it’ll be harder to use a whole one up now” and the day after that, we made a favorite chicken enchilada recipe given us by a former minister of her church who had lived in the Southwest. And she baked a favorite cake of ours (my father was diabetic and we had to be careful about sweets in the house, and also baking was hard while he was so unwell). I think it helped, maybe?

There’s a German word, Kummerspeck, which literally means “Grief-bacon” and is used to refer to the weight you put on while grieving. I had scoffed at that before because the more minor griefs (eg., breakups) I had suffered made me NOT want to eat…..but I know I’ve put on a couple pounds in the last two weeks and will have to explain to my doctor when I go in for my checkup on Tuesday….

And people brought in food – lasagna, and bread, and other things.

And we went out to eat lunch a couple times; before my father’s health failed so much going out to restaurants was a favorite thing and my mom hadn’t been able to do it, really, for six months or more while he was needing her care.

When I spoke to her today after I got home, she noted that even though she had told the ‘church ladies’ who do bereavement lunches she didn’t want them to go to the trouble for the memorial service this fall (we have some people with some specific dietary concerns coming), someone did call her back and suggest a dessert-and-coffee reception before the service and I urged her to have them do that – I have fixed things many times for funeral lunches at my own church and it feels very much like it’s one kindness I can do for the family, and having a piece of cake or a few cookies may make small talk easier in a time when it’s going to be hard.

I admit I always rolled my eyes over the “how to relate to your weird dumb relative who isn’t like you” pieces, or, worse, the “you should refuse to spend time with them or try to harangue them into your viewpoint over the Thanksgiving table” pieces, because my family has a lot of….different…..people in it, and we’ve always managed. You talk about other stuff, that’s all. You talk about how a favorite team is doing or the funny things someone’s kids are doing or you share memories….

Jeffrey Epstein, the millionaire financier and accused sex trafficker, is dead by suicide, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The officials told NBC News he was found at 7:30 a.m. ET at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York and that he hanged himself.

Epstein accuser claims she was ordered to have sex with prominent men

He was transported Saturday morning from the Metropolitan Correctional Center to a hospital in Lower Manhattan. Upon arrival, he was in cardiac arrest, people familiar with the matter say.

Epstein, 66, was being held on federal sex trafficking charges.

He was arrested July 6 in Teterboro, New Jersey, as he returned from Paris on a private jet.

He had pleaded not guilty and was denied bail.

The indictment on his case showed that he sought out minors, some as young as 14, from at least 2002 through 2005 and paying them hundreds of dollars in cash for sex at either his Manhattan townhouse or his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, federal prosecutors revealed last month.

Epstein was charged with one count of sex trafficking conspiracy and one count of sex trafficking. He faced up to 45 years in prison if found guilty.